14 showstopper moments at the Chelsea Flower Show 2016

Whether you're heading to the Chelsea Flower Show this week or getting some green-fingered inspiration from home, we've paid the iconic flower festival a visit and rounded up our favourite features…

1: Poppies

Poppies, of every sort – Californian, wild, Himalayan blue, Icelandic – were a popular plant in many gardens at this year's Chelsea. But this field of 5,000 poppies haven't been grown; they've been crocheted. The creators of the 5,000 Poppies project, Lynn Berry and Margaret Knight, set out to crochet 120 poppies to honour their fathers, who fought in the Second World War. However, keen crocheters soon got involved and swelled the total to over 250,000 poppies, inspiring pioneer of Australian sustainable landscape design Phillip Johnson to present the beautiful blooms at Chelsea 2016.

2: Meet Mary Berry

This good-enough-to-eat rose is named after the cookery show star, who's also an RHS ambassador. Launched by Harkness at the Show, it's appropriately described as a petal-packed, sweetly perfumed hybrid tea in yummy shades of clotted cream and honey.

3: Garden on the go

Diarmuid Gavin's good old English eccentric garden for Harrods features twirling topiary cones, bouncing box balls, rotating flowerbeds and wandering window boxes that rise and fall on the outside of the Arts & Crafts house, forming the background for this flowery flight of fancy – all accompanied by the strains of In an English Country Garden. 'If people smile,' said Diarmuid, describing his garden gadgetry, 'that's all that matters'.

4: Happy Birthday, Ma'am

It's the Queen's 90th this year, and as RHS Patron she's been honoured by several exhibits at Chelsea, including this beautiful 21ft high floral arch, made with British-grown blooms, on the riverside Bull Ring entrance to the Show. It was designed by Shane Connolly, who was in charge of the flowers at the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's wedding.

Another floral tribute is a 10ft cutout of the Queen's head, executed in 10,000 flowers including roses, carnations, hyacinths and freesias. Designed and built by New Covent Garden Flower Market.

5: Plants and poses

We'd definitely be motivated to do yoga on a daily basis if we had an outdoors space like this to do 'downward dog' in. Vestra Wealth's Garden of Mindful Living – a gold medal winner – is designed as a city garden providing a calm space to relax in after a busy working day. The soft greens and yellows create a harmonious backdrop in which to unwind.

6: Mesmerised by maths

The Winton Beauty of Mathematics garden, which has won silver-gilt, is an intellectual creation inspired by the maths and algorithms that underpin plants, growth and life. It features succulent plants displaying the Fibonacci sequence in pattern form* and a stunning geometric copper whirlpool bowl. The ripples, sound and the central vortex are quite hypnotic to watch.

* A numerical sequence where the next number is the sum of the two previous. Expressed in pattern form, it creates a spiral effect, as seen in sunflower seed heads and Romanesco cauliflower — told you it was intellectual!

7: Soundscape gardening

An acoustic garden inspired by world-leading solo percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, who's profoundly deaf, includes a marimba made from flowerpots. It also has an update on the traditional Japanese garden feature, the deer scarer, a pipe which pours out water then falls back to make a knocking sound, then refills, pours out, and so on. In the Papworth Trust – Together We Can Garden these are made from purple plastic, harmonising beautifully with the purple planting.

8: Alan Titchmarsh

Chelsea veteran (not to be confused with Chelsea Pensioner), a smiling Alan Titchmarsh draws the crowds wherever he goes…

9: Get ahead

Don't miss the stunning floral headdresses in the Grand Pavilion. As part of the RHS Young Chelsea Florist of the Year competition, they're designed on a Brazilian theme in honour of the Rio Olympics. This one's by April Bennett from Bluebells of Henley, features fluffy pampas grass.

10: Flower bed

This play on words is The Garden Bed – a Partnership with Asda, designed to illustrate the benefits of a garden to hospice patients. Unusually for Chelsea it features cut flowers, with delphiniums and other blue blooms woven into the 'bedding'.

11: Block rocking

Slabs of stone and hefty boulders are everywhere at this year's Chelsea, but none come bigger than this, the Antithesis of Sarcophagi, which has won gold. The 44-tonne granite cube represents a world turned inside out. One side bears a carved inscription and the other sides feature peepholes through which you can glimpse the most secret garden ever seen here — expect queues!

12: Pause for reflection

Opened by actress Rosamund Pike and seven-year-old Ava, the Morgan Stanley Garden for Great Ormond Street Hospital, where Ava has her treatment for cystic fibrosis, is based on a woodland theme with pockets of brightly coloured planting, with a calming, reflective pool.

Rosamund commented: 'When all the crowds have gone home from the show, it will be transported to Great Ormond Street Hospital for the families to experience and enjoy for years to come and in my view, this makes it even more special.'

13: Park run

Giving a whole new meaning to the concept of 'training plants' is this giant pair made entirely of foliage. The display, by Birmingham City Council, celebrates local artist Willard Wigan, famed for his tiny work inside the eye of a needle, seen behind the wicker Usain Bolt. Through the microscopes on hand you can see miniature versions of each larger-than-life element.

14: All aboard

Step back in time on a journey of just a few minutes, aboard the luxurious British Pullman, sister train to the Orient Express. Embark in Devon, walk through the opulent Zena carriage, complete with liveried stewards, and alight amid jungle ferns of the tropics in the Bowden Hostas installation in the Great Pavilion. It's all inspired by the globetrotting exploits of intrepid plant-hunters of the past.